Instagram’s Parental Guide Helps You Track Your Child’s Online Safety

With Google and Apple adding digital wellbeing features to Android and iOS respectively, numerous social media platforms followed suit and introduced their own take on the user-facing feature.

Instagram too came up with its own version called Usage Insights and later setup a dedicated well-being website to help users manage their time efficiently and making them aware of the measures they can take to maintain a healthy social media presence.

Next step for Instagram is a new section on the digital wellbeing website specifically for parents. This parental guide contains information about how Instagram works and the ways in which parents can ensure that their children are not exposed to the negative aspects of excessive social media usage.

The ‘For Parents’ section on the Instagram wellbeing website is basically a step-by-step walkthrough for parents which explains everything starting from ‘What is Instagram’ to tips on handling social media interactions, complete with a glossary of terms such as stories, Explore, IGTV, etc.

The parental guide is divided into 6 sections, but it lays special emphasis on three aspects: interactions, privacy and time management.

The interaction management section talks about the tools which regulate conversations and the settings one should apply to filter out negative comments or block them. The chapter about time management contains details about activity metrics, setting reminders to control usage time and muting Instagram notifications to keep away distractions.

The guide also has a section titled ‘Ten Questions To Help You Start The Conversation’, which as the name suggests, contains 10 Instagram-related questions which parents can ask their children regarding their activity on the platform. Instagram’s new move is certainly a welcome move, especially for parents who have little idea about social media and as a result, refrain from talking about the same with their children, which could lead to unwarranted abuse.